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The retired bishop of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, defended the Society of Saint Pius X and offered strong criticism of the Vatican.

Archbishop Jan Paweł Lenga, M.I.C., said that “it was worth seeing the consecration of the bishops of the Society of St Pius X: what peace, what joy, what prayerful atmosphere, what solemnity! Nothing like that can be seen in the post-conciliar Church anymore.”

“The See of Peter has been occupied by people who have nothing to do with Christ,” Archbishop Lenga continued. “Prevost’s approval of the excommunication is proof that he no longer represents the Church that follows Jesus and leads people to salvation.”

AdVaticanum reported that the Diocese of Włocławek, Poland, had earlier imposed restrictions on Archbishop Lenga “after a series of public interventions directed against Pope Francis. The disciplinary measures prohibited him from preaching at Mass and speaking to the media, although Archbishop Lenga immediately rejected the sanctions.”

Citing canon 1734 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the Society of Saint Pius X announced it filed a preliminary recourse against the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s July 2 decree declaring that six SSPX bishops had incurred automatic excommunication.

The Society stated that its request, submitted to the same dicastery, “constitutes the mandatory preliminary step before the possible introduction of a hierarchical recourse” and “has the effect of suspending the execution of the decree.”

Catholic and Orthodox prelates, including the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Orthodox co-chairman of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, are taking part in the 30th Oriental Lumen Conference in Washington.

“After three decades of Orientale Lumen conferences, ecumenical dialogue between Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and Roman Catholic Christians has reached a critical stage,” according to the Orientale Lumen Foundation. “The central ecclesiological question today is no longer whether consensus is possible, but how this convergence is to be received and embodied in the life of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

Gunmen on motorcycles killed two Catholic young adults in Mastung, Pakistan, on July 8.

Islamic State – Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for the murders.

A Le Figaro investigation found that a prestigious French military secondary school refused to consider pupils from independent Catholic schools despite their reputation for academic excellence.

The students whose applications were not considered all attended traditionalist Catholic schools, either affiliated with the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest or with the Society of Saint Pius X.

A mob of 60 people entered the property of the Salesian sisters in Barasat on July 12 and demanded that the sisters destroy a partially constructed chapel and cemetery, according to Catholic Connect, a website of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India.

Barasat is located in the state of West Bengal (map), where four incidents of anti-Christian violence took place on July 5.

Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, warned in an editorial against “any glorification or exaggeration of the Pope’s role as head of state, any emphasis on the importance of this role.”

In “The Pope always speaks as a Shepherd,” Tornielli wrote that “it is true that, to guarantee the absolute freedom of the Vicar of Christ, it was established nearly a century ago that there would be a tiny patch of land where the Bishop of Rome and Shepherd of the Universal Church would also be sovereign—and thus head of state. But this was, and remains, an arrangement designed to recognize precisely this need for independence from any other state, and not an affirmation of a dual mission.”

Tornielli concluded:

When he calls for human life to be respected and protected at every stage of its existence, when he speaks of peace with the good of all peoples in mind and calls for an end to the mad arms race—even going beyond the concept of a “just war”—when he calls for dialogue and negotiation by invoking the Magisterium of Social Doctrine, when he calls for migrants to be regarded as people to be welcomed, without ever forgetting their human dignity; when he reminds us that the poor are at the heart of the Gospel and that we must build more just and equitable societies; when he defends the right to religious freedom; when he emphasizes the importance of caring for Creation so that we may pass it on to our children and grandchildren—the Successor of Peter is not speaking as a head of state. He is simply proclaiming the Gospel.

Tornielli’s editorial followed a New York Times interview with Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. The newspaper reported that “Mr. Burch argued that when the pope spoke out against the war, he was not doing so as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, the vicar of Christ, but only as the sovereign political leader of the Vatican City-State.”